


Short-circuited

by Lennelle



Series: Deviant [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Android Sam Winchester, Detective Dean Winchester, Detroit Become Human AU, Gen, everyone is having emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 21:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17553524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lennelle/pseuds/Lennelle
Summary: Following the interrogation, Dean struggles to process what happened.





	Short-circuited

Dean has barely slept in two days. It replays in his head, a scratched disc that goes from the end right back to the beginning. He can hear the crack-whip  _bang_ of the gun going off, then Sam's face. Power: off. They wheeled the two androids out of the precinct on a metal trolley. Dean's not sure what he expected. Shiny black body bags or a sheet over their faces. He stood and watched them go, scrap metal on a cart.

He shouldn't feel like this. They only  _look_ like people, but they aren't. He'd only had Sam around for a week or so and it already feels strange without him, like an empty space on a bookshelf.

Dean drinks himself to his bed and wakes up late, he avoids the family photos on tiny apartment walls and counts the bullets in his gun. Breakfast is a oil-slick bagel on the way to work, washed down with coffee. He almost spills the last of the cup down himself as soon as he enters the station.

There, sitting at his desk, is Sam.

Sam smiles as soon as he sees him and stands up and up - why the fuck did they build him so tall? - and offers the desk chair to Dean.

"Jesus fucking Christ," is the first thing Dean says. But no, not Jesus, just a resurrected android. "What the fuck? I saw you get shot in the head."

Sam's face is cool as ever, bright hazel eyes blinking fox-like at him. "That incident was... unfortunate, yes," he says. "My memory and data was transferred into a new body. I'm ready to get back to work."

Dean can't speak. He places his coffee cup down on his desk before he hurls it at something, possibly Sam. He was right. Androids aren't human. Humans can't do  _this_.

"So, what?" he finally says. "You die one day, back to work the next?"

Sam frowns at him. "You're upset," he deduces. 

"No shit, Sherlock!" Dean snaps, and drops into his desk chair, resting his cheek on the cool table. 

Sam lingers over his shoulder, waiting. When Dean doesn't move or speak, Sam says, "What is it that upset you? Perhaps I can make an effort to avoid it in the future."

"Jesus," Dean mutters, lifting his head. "I watched you _die_. Now, you're suddenly back like nothing happened."

Sam continues to frown. "I don't understand."

"Of course, you don't," Dean says, shaking his head. "Because you don't have emotions," he adds, mostly to himself. "You don't  _feel_."

"No," Sam agrees. "I can tell your emotions might make us working together a little more difficult, I'll make sure to keep that in mind."

Dean clenches his jaw before he can say something he might regret. He settles for, "Fuck off, would you? You fucking puppet." 

Sam lingers for a moment, probably trying to add up Dean's emotions like an equation, but he disappears to Dean-doesn't-fucking-care. He hates to admit he'd gotten a little attached to Sam, with his pointy nose and ridiculous sleeked back, long hair. He'd reminded Dean a lot of... well, let's not go there. He can't let himself make the same mistake again, not when he knows Sam won't care about him in return. If he were stuck in a burning building with key evidence to their investigation, Dean's certain which Sam would save from the flames.

* * *

 

Sam isn't sure where to go when Dean sends him away. If he had a digestive system he'd go to the kitchen for coffee and a donut like the rest of the officers. If he had a bladder, he'd use the bathroom. Sam has none of these things.

He finds himself standing outside the door of the interrogation room. He rewinds to that moment, days earlier, the scene playing before him, clear as water. He watches the deviant pull the gun from Gordon Walker's belt and point it at Sam. He remembers, just before his power went out, words in his head.  _Save Dean_.

When they had re-booted him, he wasn't sure what had happened to Dean.  _He's alive_ , he was told and he experienced something odd. He was pleased, but it was more than that. Sam can't describe it, he struggles to understand it at all. Once he saw Dean step foot into the station, Sam was flooded a gently jolt through his circuits. He scoured every word in the dictionary and found one which fit.  _Relief, noun: a feeling of reassurance and relaxation following release from anxiety or distress._

This bothers Sam. Anxiety and distress are not a part of his program. _F_ _eeling_ certainly isn't. He runs a quick system check. No anomalies found. He's picking up on human behaviours, he reasons. This is simply the way he tries to understand them, he tells himself.

He's in the interrogation room. There, he thinks, is where I had been standing. He glances down. And there, that is where I was shot. The room has since been cleaned but Sam can see faint spatters, a blurry mess on the floor where someone scrubbed it away as best they could. Sam turns to the mirror and takes in his appearance for the first time. His face is not symmetrical, because humans are not symmetrical and they wanted him to look as human as possible. He is attractive, perhaps, but not conventionally so. His features are sharp and angular, eyebrows slim and arched beneath a heavy brow which rests over a pair of titled eyes. He wonders who designed him, wonders why they chose to give him dimples and a mole beside his nose.

He inches closer to the mirror, presses the tip of his index finger to the centre of his forehead, the same place where, on another identical face, a bullet split the skin open and lodged itself nice and cosy inside. Humans don't come back, Sam knows that. Perhaps that was why Dean was so upset; he thought Sam wouldn't come back. And yet he seemed angry that Sam  _did_ come back.

For such simple, fragile creatures, humans are awfully difficult to make sense of.

He gives his reflection one last look before leaving the room and heading back to Dean's desk. Dean has barely moved since he left, still slumped in his seat, cheek pressed to the desk's surface. He stirs and peels one eye open to look at Sam. He speaks before Sam has a chance to.

"The other day," Dean says, "in the interrogation room, right before things went to shit, you said 'don't do that, you're hurting him'."

Sam tilts his head, unsure what Dean is trying to say.

"You were worried," Dean goes on. "You didn't want Gordon to hurt the deviant. Why?"

"I - " Sam begins, immediately stops. For once, the answer isn't right there on the tip of his synthetic tongue. "I don't know."

Dean sits all the way up and leans back in his chair, twisting around to look straight up at Sam. His lips twitch at the corners. "Worry is a human emotion. You experienced empathy, didn't you?"

"No," Sam snaps. "I am not like them. I am not a deviant. I am _not_ malfunctioning."

Dean barely blinks. "Who said that you were?"


End file.
